


USBelligerent

by LaFlashdrive



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2765618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaFlashdrive/pseuds/LaFlashdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t say anything to protest because saying, “Don’t worry, Perr, I’m not going to make out with his flashdrive” sounds ridiculous and if you articulate the thought it would only remind you of how ridiculous your relationship with JP sounds to everyone around you (and sometimes to you, too), and you don’t think you can handle that right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	USBelligerent

JP could gain access to your phone if he really wants to, and he does sometimes if you have to go to class or you’re out dealing with student crises with Perry, but he prefers being hooked up to a computer and you oblige him because it’s hardly a ridiculous request. He already no longer has a physical body and it doesn’t make sense for you to limit him even further. It’s easier for him to type to you on a computer screen, and the internet gives him access to all the information he could ever want. He lives to learn, and there’s not much for him to do trapped inside of your flashdrive.

JP is content working and existing on your personal laptop, but more often than not he pleads with you to take him on field trips to the library. You hesitate because visiting the mausoleum of books is stupidly dangerous when putting yourself in peril isn’t necessary to defeat some ungodly horror from beyond the don of time, but really the only problems anyone ever has with the library occur after hours and it’s no trouble for you to take JP there during the day. It’s hard for you to say no to him anyway. He gets so giddy at the prospect, like a child just learning to read who hasn’t been conditioned to hate it yet. You just taught JP about emoticons, too, and the small smiley faces he types at you when he asks to head across campus are as convincing as if they were the real thing. It’s impossible to say no to them.

It’s the card catalog he likes best. Most online records don’t have access to ancient Sumerian tomes or books old enough to be bound in tanned human flesh, and JP makes you pluck these books off the shelves and read them to him - when you can, anyway. More often than not they aren’t in English, but rather than upset JP, you ask Carmilla to come with you and translate from time to time. Usually she doesn’t even protest so long as Laura is busy and she doesn’t have class. She’s been a lot nicer since she and Laura started dating. Apparently love has the power to make even the broodiest of vampires friendly.

You think Carmilla likes JP (though not in the way that you like JP) and that makes you happy because you want your friends to enjoy the company of the boy you’ve barely let out of your hands since the battle, even if his presence is a bit unorthodox. Carmilla seems to adjust to JP fairly quickly. The digitized thing is the only odd thing about him to her. She understands how he talks and how he thinks because she was alive during his time. Her own prior lover once spoke the dialect of his decade. His diction is a bit more for the others to take in, but they’re getting used to it and getting used to him. Laura is just behind Carmilla with Danny just behind her. Perry is the only one not adjusting very well.

You don’t want to talk about that, though.

You bring your own laptop with you to the library because it has Netflix and doesn’t block every social media outlet known to man like the school computers do. Besides, you’ve been in class all day and your brain is fried. You’re not quite up for the constant attempts at self-education that JP is day in and day out. You have other ways to learn and college is exhausting. You didn’t get the recognition of automatically passing grades like Laura did for your rescue because you were one of the people saved, not the one doing the saving (though you argued you played your part.) You still have to work for your GPA.

JP’s typing at you, but you lose yourself in some bad sitcom and don’t notice until a few minutes later. By the time you’ve looked at the second computer monitor for his words, he’s already added a row of frowny faces because he can tell you’re not paying attention to him. It makes you feel guilty, but it’s hard. You can’t keep your eyes on him every second of every day. If you were at home you’d turn on the text-to-speech app, give JP a voice and let him select his own accent, which he changes from time to time. You think it’s cute and you like hearing him talk (even if it isn’t with his own voice), but you’re in public now. You’d rather not have the entire library know that you’re having a conversation with a computer. People already think you’re weird for liking the overbearing, obsessive compulsive Perry. No one needs to know that your new crush is a flashdrive.

“You’re not listening. Do you not want to be here? :(“

“No, I do.” You type back because you don’t want to say the words aloud. Even if you did you have headphones on and you’re afraid the words would come out louder than usual with your impaired hearing. “I just got distracted. I’m sorry.”

JP leaps from computer to computer just because he can. You’ve installed his software onto your laptop and you’ve given him access to it anytime he wants. You don’t think it would be fair to keep him dormant and trapped in a USB port at all times, sleeping indeterminately for hours on end while you’re busy. He shouldn’t have to live according to your schedule. He shouldn’t have to exist only when you allow him to. His face pops up on your screen and covers the video player.

“Am I the distracting one now? ;)”

You can’t help but smile at his sudden interruption, even if you are missing your show now. You click into the text box and type. “You always distract me.”

“Sorry. :(“

His face quickly disappears. It blips from one screen to another and he’s back to losing himself in the catalog before you can even spin your chair around to face the second monitor. “I meant that in a good way,” you type. “I need the distraction what with everything that’s been going on lately.”

You watch him scroll through a couple more pages before his cursor even blinks at you in the text box. Your show is still playing but you aren’t listening to what’s being said now. The sound is a dull background noise at this point and the characters may as well be innocent bystanders in the library. You’re glad they’re too caught up in their own drama to peer at you with prying eyes through the computer screen.

JP takes so long to type that you think he’s purposefully giving you the cold shoulder just to teach you a lesson about ignoring him. “Do you mean the stuff with Lophiiformes or the stuff with Perry?”

You don’t know how to answer that, don’t know if you want to answer that. You know JP is jealous of Perry. Somehow you can see it in his eyes on the screen, even though his image is unchanging. Briefly you wonder if he’s figured out a way to subtly alter the icon to fit his mood, but you shrug off the question like unwanted hands on your shoulders because it doesn’t matter and deep down you know that he can’t. It’s just your mind playing tricks on you. It’s you humanizing him because that’s what you think he deserves, even though you fully accept his new, digital nature and the fact that he is not exactly and will never again be human.

You answer as truthfully and as vaguely as parameters will allow you. “Both.”

He’s quicker to reply this time, even though you know he still might be a little hurt. “I can look up how to combat mythical creatures, but it’s harder to find a manual to access on how to repair one’s fractured relationship with their best friend. :(“

‘Best Friend’ seems to both diminish and exaggerate your relationship with Perry. It reminds you of how close you are, that the two of you are more than just friends, but JP uses the words condescendingly, too. They remind you that you and Perry are no longer more than just friends. You don’t think he’s knocking Perry down too much on purpose, though. He really does seem to care about how you feel about her. You are literally all he cares about. Beside from his books, you are his world, and Perry is a part of your world so that makes her part of his, too.

“We’ll figure it out,” you say, non-committal. You do not want to think about confrontation right now, not with Perry and not with JP either. You remove your responsibilities like shoes. It is freeing for the time being, but you know you’ll have to put them back on eventually.

You don’t think JP is done with the conversation, but he knows that you are so he backs off. He’s good at reading people like that. Which is strange to you because he cannot touch you and he cannot taste you and he can only see you through webcam eyes and listen to you with microphone ears. He is able to read you so well with so few senses even though he has not had human interaction since the 19th century, and it amazes you because the only other person so quick to understand you was Perry and these days you do not feel like Perry understands you at all.

The fact is, though, that she does understand you. She gets you better than ever before. Ever since the parasites, ever since the fight, she’s suddenly come to terms with all these new things. She’s stared down cowardice, accepted the paranormal, fought a battle of life and death she could have easily removed herself from and all just to defend your honor. She's _embraced the weird_. She’s never understood you so much, and yet there are still things she cannot accept, things that should seem trivial to her after a fatal war with the omnipotent and the antediluvian. 

She can accept that Laura is dating a reformed serial killer, but she cannot accept that you are dating a conscience trapped inside wires. She can accept that Laura and Carmilla are clingy because both of them almost died and they need reassurance that the other still exists, but she cannot accept why you still run tests on your own spinal fluid because those things may still be in your brain because she insists there is no chance of that being the case even though she cannot know and the light isn’t dead like you thought it was. She can accept that JP, who has no physical body and no genitals to speak of and whose entire essence is purely spiritual at this point, still identifies as male, but she cannot accept that you just want to be called ‘they’ and not Susan. 

If a 17th century vampire who only truly cares about one person in the entire world can make an effort to get it right, if a 19th century English major can adopt the usage of a grammatically-incorrect singular ‘they’ against his teachings just for your sake, then your best friend should be able to pay you the same respect. She should just be able to call you LaFontaine.

“Aha!” JP’s message alert chirps in your ears and when you look at him the light is back in his eyes. The more you stare at his icon, the more the light filters back into yours, too. “I’ve discovered the fatal flaw in the Sea Devil’s plans!” he begins. “It must dwell beneath the earth to survive, correct? Therefore, the only thing we must do to combat its presence is to colonize the stratosphere. Potentially Mars. Interstellar travel appears to be our best option. I hope there’s internet access in the deep reaches of space!”

You laugh because that’s just like JP to still have a sense of humor even if he hasn’t had a single person to tell a joke to in a century and a half. Perry must have lost her sense of humor in her infancy, you think. She hadn’t even laughed at your knock knock jokes when you were five - not that they were particularly good knock knock jokes, in her defense.

“I think we know what your next science project is, LaFonbrain. :),” he continues.

You smile at the nickname and type. “I’m an undergaduate bio-major, not an aeronautics engineer. I don’t think I’m qualified to blast us all into the next galaxy quite yet.”

“Can’t we at least study if it’s possible to send internet signals through outer space? If we had had computers back in 1874 and I’d have known I was going to be digitized for the rest of my life, I would have given up my English degree to pursue the study of the technologies. Do you happen to know any individuals working in that particular area?”

“’Fraid not. I think Will might have been majoring in something like that, but I don’t think he’s going to be much help to us now.”

“Ah, yes,” JP types speedily. “William.” His eyes glow red as the saturation of the screen heightens momentarily. “That fool deserved to parish. Much like his mother. She tried to kill me! I knew I should have placed an online order for that ghost tonic. It would have charged to your card, but I think it would have been a valuable investment of your monetary funds.”

He’s probably right, and you make a mental note to tell JP to buy some of Jim Jasper’s concoction for you later. You probably will need it at some point, especially if you two keep hanging out in the library all the time. One of these days you’re not going to keep good enough track of the clock.

Speaking of the clock, you look up now and it's a little after five which is a little late for your comfort, even though the paranormal stuff reportedly doesn’t happen until sometime soon after six. You don’t trust that the staircases are still in the right place, and you’re afraid that it might take you more than an hour to navigate your way downstairs and out of the building if you don't get a head start now. "You almost done, JP? We should probably head out soon."

"I believe so," he types, closing the tab he's on before exiting out of the browser all together. "I can't find anything useful."

"Alright. I'm shutting you down."

You shut your own laptop while he prepares himself for re-entombment in your flashdrive and you make sure to eject him safely because the last thing you want is his file getting corrupted.

While you're packing up and stuffing your laptop into its case, your phone buzzes in your pocket. You almost don't answer it because it's probably Perry wondering why you aren't home yet. You don't want to text her because you’re coming right back. You’ll see her at the dorm in ten minutes and you can take care of yourself, but you fish your phone out of your jeans anyway because ten minutes is an eternity to Perry. Ten minutes means at least ten more texts and at least ten more minutes of Perry’s heart straining with worry. She’s going to end up with angina if she doesn’t learn to control her anxiousness sometime soon. Sometimes you think about becoming a doctor just to make sure you can take care of her later in life. You know she’s still going to be around. You can’t imagine your life without her, even though you wish you could sometimes. You know you’ll probably end up living together after college. Unless she gets married. But the idea of Perry finding someone else and settling down with someone who is not you makes you a bit more than uneasy, and you don’t want to think about that possibility.

Perry’s name isn’t what’s on your phone when you look at it, though. Your phone reads JP and all he’s sent you to reassure you that he is alive and well is a smiley face that you’re sure does not do his real smile justice. You don’t text him back, but you adopt the grin because you know he gave it to you for you to wear. It is the closest thing he can get to offering you his jacket on an evening this cold. He was a Zeta back in 1874 after all. The chivalry is ingrained in him, and you don’t want to crush his spirits because at this point all he is is spirit.

The walk back home is quiet and relaxing, but the closer you get to your dorm and the farther the sun descends beneath the horizon line, the more worried you become because Perry really should have texted you to make sure you weren’t dead by now. Your legs involuntarily pick up the pace and you barge into your own dorm room as hurriedly as you typically rush into Laura’s.

You see why Perry hasn’t texted you almost immediately. She is too busy cleaning. Everything smells like bleach.

Perry is dusting the handles on the dresser, wiping them clean of both your fingerprints and her own when she sees you. It is obvious she is thoroughly engrossed in her work because when she greets you she does not realize the words that are coming out of her mouth.

“Hi, honey. Sorry it’s a mess in here. I’m running a little behind. One of the sophomores slipped on the ice outside the Robespierre building and broke his leg and started threatening to sue the school because he’s a pre-law major. I was the only one around who could talk him down because you know how the locals revert to using German when they’re angry. I was the only person by the quad who knew the language because so many international students go here. Anyway, I didn’t get back to the dorm until I walked him over to the infirmary, and I was trying to clean up in time, but it’s just so filthy in here and I haven’t even gotten a chance to start dinner yet! You know I don’t approve of the MSGs, but I was thinking we might have to order take out because if all of this cleaning takes me much longer we’ll never be able to avoid the dining hall rush or the crowd in the kitchen, so if you want to look at the menus on the bulletin board and order something that would really help me out, sweetie.”

Perry doesn’t know what she is doing until her cleaning brings her closer to you and she leans over to kiss you on the cheek out of habit. She stops herself then. She stops everything then. She is no longer talking, no longer moving, no longer breathing, and she is centimeters away from your face.

She pulls back, slowly then quickly like a muscle giving way, resisting at first before surrendering and letting itself tear, snap back into itself loose and sinewy and never feeling quite the same way as it did before.

It is not the first time in recent history that Perry has pulled away from kissing you. She has kissed you exactly once since after the battle, during the first moment you two were alone in your room, safe and sane and neither of you pod-peopled. It was on the cheek then, too. Perry kissed your wounds because that is what you are supposed to do when people you love get hurt. Your lips are supposed to make them heal faster.

Her initial reason for kissing you was now her excuse not to. She doesn’t want to kiss your bandages because she doesn’t want to hurt you, she claims, but you know she just doesn’t want to hurt herself. Her initial awkwardness and denial of the kissing was the result of her refusal to admit to herself that she liked you. Now it is because, while she was trying to process her feelings for you, you were busy developing feelings for someone else. Now she does not kiss you because she knows it would mean you were cheating on JP. (Even though you think you are not really JP’s to kiss, if only because he does not have the physical capacity to kiss you.)

You flinch when Perry pulls away, but she doesn’t see you scrunch your face because she isn’t facing you anymore. She’s back to cleaning, purposefully on the other side of the room. You’re more than aware of JP in your phone in one pocket and in your USB in the other, and you desperately want him to be separate from your person, to be physically in the room with you and Perry to diffuse some of the tension. He can do that because he comforts you and because Perry can never play a bad hostess, can never act anything but normal in the presence of anyone who is not you.

The closest you can get to that is setting him up on the laptop so that he can talk to both of you. You do that before you even think to reach for the takeout menus like Perry wants. His existence is priority over food. When you cross the room, the table is wet, glistening with the liquid remnants of unevaporated bleach, and you’re glad you notice before you put your laptop down on it. You lay a textbook down first before resting your computer on that. You would rather pay the fees for water damage on your rented class materials than accidentally electrocute your boyfriend. He cannot stand water (even though 70% of you is composed of it).

JP opens the text-to-speech program before you can even click on it for him. He likes talking. “Good evening, Lola.” His voice is deep today, accented even in its robotic monotony.

It’s weird to imagine more Austrians like JP attending Silas like they did back in his time, before the locals started believing all the rumors surrounding the university. If he was born in your time, he probably wouldn’t be here. He probably would have moved across Europe to go to school, and he definitely wouldn’t have gotten digitized there. You allow yourself, for the briefest of moments, to fantasize about meeting him like that, as a person with the same generational background as you and a body and a family that was still alive, but you quickly crash the train of thought. Things aren’t like that, can never be like that. It’s not worth getting worked up about.

Perry smiles politely. She always understands his accent perfectly because she learned his language through speech programs just like his, through overly pronounced examples of each and every word in online German dictionaries. She is better at understanding the language in its educational formality than she is in its colloquy. Sometimes they talk to each other in German and JP has to tell you what was said later on, but the conversations are never anything of particular substance. “Hello, JP,” she returns. 

Perry is too busy cleaning to talk much and you strike up a conversation in English before Perry finishes her task and one of them can do it in German. You remember the takeout. “Do you like Italian food, JP?” The question is inclusive, as if he’s going to be sharing your meal with you and has a say in what you two decide to eat. You think it makes him feel good to at least be involved, even if he can’t experience everything himself. He lives vicariously through you.

“I miss Italian food so much!” The voice, garbled and over-enunciated, does not do his excitement justice. When you look at the screen, the original sentiment is expressed in all caps.

“Italian it is, then!” you cheer before pausing. “As long as that’s okay with you, Perr.”

“Yes, yes, that’s fine,” Perry inputs, though her mind is still elsewhere. Her cleaning absorbs her like the library catalog absorbed JP. “I could go for some nice manicotti.” Perry gestures with shaky, gloved hands whose tremors are almost unnoticeable when combined with her frantic movements. Earthquakes seem to be a natural disaster of her body, just like they are now of the ground Silas is built upon. Your own shaking is out of place compared to hers. You’re not supposed to be quivering, so you steady your hands with a firm grasp on your cell phone, press it to your ear, and pretend it isn’t wavering against the side of your temple.

The two of you eat in silence. Perry has also done the dishes as part of her cleaning spree and she revels in eating off freshly-washed utensils. She likes the sanitation of a clean, hot fork the way you like the sterility of a lab. It bonds you in some way.

JP tries to bond you, too. He isn’t eating, of course, but he’s still excited about the Italian food and you’re watching him google recipes while Perry sits on her bed and stares intently at her plate, like eating is an activity of extreme focus or she’s cutting wires on a bomb and can’t nick the wrong one or else all of you will explode. You try to leave her be, but JP engages her. He makes a point of addressing you both in conversation.

“Lola, which herbs do you prefer?”

“I don’t know what kind of noodles you’re eating, LaFontaine, but I promise they would taste better if my mother had made them fresh.”

The talking is as mindless as the chewing, and you can’t help but think that this doesn’t feel like dinner. It felt like dinner when Perry cooked for you, when the two of you went to the dining hall and sat together and talked about the potential benefits of arguing your case to the dean for your official spot as co-floor don, when you and Perry would bring home takeout boxes from local Austrian restaurants stuffed with one of everything on the menu and feed each other samples as you sat on the same bed side by side, legs crossed beneath the sheets, even though Perry hates getting crumbs on her blankets. Eating now just feels like fuel, like you were hungry and needed to recharge your batteries before they died. You plug your laptop in so JP can feel the same way. He thanks you for it, but it’s a miserable experience for you and you almost feel guilty for sharing it with him.

When she is done, Perry clears her throat and takes your plate from you mindlessly. She puts all your dishes back into the sink, but she does not start washing them like you immediately expect her to do and that act alone alarms you.

She clears her throat again, and this time the announcement she intended to make originally comes out. It’s clear, formal and enunciated though not as dramatically so as each of JP’s words. It is a declaration and Perry is informing you of her plans like she is obligatorily preparing a batch of freshmen for their first town hall meeting.

“Uh, Danny and the girls at the Summer Society are short a janitor this weekend as one of the staff ladies was forced to take some time off for a family emergency. I offered to clean for them as her replacement tomorrow, and I figured I would just go over there now. Maybe sleep on one of the couches in their rec room. That way I can be up bright and early and get to cleaning before any of the other girls wake up and I inconvenience them. I also wouldn’t want to wake you too early. It is a Saturday after all. You know how early I like to get up.”

Every word Perry says is bullshit. You do not doubt that she is cleaning the Summer Society dorms and you do not doubt she’d prefer to get started on her job in the wee hours of the morning, but you have been woken up by Perry’s early starts hundreds of times while living with her over the past three years and you’ve only complained during a handful of those incidents. You’ve learned to sleep through most of them by now. They don’t really bother you and Perry knows that. She is leaving you and JP alone like she is leaving Laura and Carmilla alone, but you do not feel up to the things that Laura and Carmilla are up to right now.

You don’t say anything to protest because saying, “Don’t worry, Perr, I’m not going to make out with his flashdrive” sounds ridiculous and if you articulate the thought it would only remind you of how ridiculous your relationship with JP sounds to everyone around you (and sometimes to you, too), and you don’t think you can handle that right now.

When Perry leaves, an overnight bag strapped to a bindle over her shoulder, you look to JP for comfort, but his eyes are sad, too.

“I feel like a third wheel. :( “ He types outside of the speech program because the app does a hilariously bad job of reading emoticons and “colon begin parentheses “ are not the words JP wants you to hear right now. Or maybe he does it just because talking out loud seems inappropriate in this moment, like it was the act that had put the three of you into this situation in the first place and he was going to avoid repeating his mistake at all costs.

“You’re not a third wheel,” you say aloud, very firm in your resignation. JP may be afraid to speak, but you are not. He is important to you and he is welcome by your side anywhere that you may go. If Perry cannot deal with that, it is her problem. You refuse to let his feelings be hurt. You refuse to let him think he doesn’t matter to you as much as he does.

“You two have so much history. I feel like I don’t belong. :(“

“You do belong, JP. You and I have so much in common. If Perry likes me, then she has to like you, too.”

“I believe she likes me when I speak German,” JP says after a prolonged moment of contemplation. “I try to discuss subjects in which she has expressed an interest, and I believe she likes me enough as a person. I think she enjoys talking to me from time to time, but I do not believe that we are friends. I don’t think she actually likes me.”

JP hits the nail on the head, but then again he usually does. He is smart, one of the smartest people you know. He was the first person to nearly expose the secrets of the dean and he was able to do so without a team of friends behind him or a vampire ace-in-the-hole. He is brilliant, and he is right, but that does not mean you don’t wish he wasn’t. You wish he and Perry got along better than they do. You wish Perry made as much of an effort to develop their relationship as he did, though you don’t blame her for why she doesn’t.

Like a lot of things lately, you just don’t want to talk about it.

“Whatever,” you say, and you try to keep the words from coming out as bitter as they do. “That doesn’t matter now. She’s gone for the night, and it’s just the two of us. Nobody has to feel like a third wheel.”

It is a while before he responds and that solemnity on his face does not falter no matter how long you stare at his icon and wish for it to morph its shape. “I still do…” he types slowly, like a sinner taking a deep breath before confession. “I am sorry.”

You shake your head. “No, I’m sorry. This whole thing is my fault.”

“I do not believe it is anyone’s fault, LaFontaine. Sometimes these situations are merely unavoidable…” JP trails off like you imagine he would in conversation. You can picture him craning his neck downward, staring at his feet the way Perry stares at her plate and waiting for the hat to fall off his head to knock him out of his trance.

The silence is a reflecting period for both of you. You contemplate his words of wisdom, wonder how he got so smart when he’d been locked away from the world for so long. Maybe the solitude gave him time to think. Maybe that’s what you need, too. Maybe you need to do a lot of thinking and maybe you need to be alone to do it. Maybe after that you’ll feel smarter, like JP, like you know all the answers that you’re searching for.

“I believe I would like to sleep now,” JP speaks somberly. He has to vocalize the words to get your attention because you are not looking at the computer screen. You’re staring at your feet the way you imagine he would be if he were real. His voice shocks you back into reality because it reminds you that there is something about him that is real. Just because his vocal chords are a technological prosthetic does not mean that they are not an extension of his being.

“You don’t have to sleep,” you chuckle. You raise your head and laugh because you want him to be joking. You want him to be envious of slumber the way he is envious of Italian food. You want him to be sarcastic, but he is not.

“I believe I would like to be turned off, then.”

His rephrasing confirms that he is serious. Your shoulders slump even further and you feel like you are being dragged to the floor, like an anchor has been tied around your neck and you are sinking into the depths of the ocean where Lophiiformes lies, cast out as nothing more than bait to the monster once again.

JP notices your dejection. “Just for a bit,” he clarifies. “Just for the night. If that is okay, I would prefer to be put back inside of the flashdrive now, please.”

The declaration is heart-breaking to you, like a general asking to be shot by his private instead of risking being captured by the enemy, like Carmilla asking to be reburied inside of her coffin. It hurts you to comply, but it would hurt you more to force him to stay conscious when he does not want to be. It hurts you like you hurt when Perry ran out of the room because this is his equivalent of running away from you just like Perry did. You try to smile for him, but it doesn’t work very well. “Of course.” Your hand reaches for the flashdrive in your pocket, plugs it into the slot.

“Goodnight, JP,” you whisper to him because you cannot think of anything else to say to make him feel better. You want to say more, to tell him that you love him, but you don’t because neither of you have said that word yet.

You don’t because you’re talking to a flashdrive.

“Goodnight, LaFontaine.” It happens too quickly for you. He speaks and then all his text disappears from the screen. He speaks and then his face does, too.

When you rip the USB out of your laptop, it feels more like ripping your heart out of your chest.


End file.
